The wide chamber seemed to close in on Kitty, centuries of vibrant colors and saints’ faces crowding her.
“Perhaps a bit too bluntly put, Con,” Mr. Yale murmured, his gaze steady on her.
“Oh, I don’t imagine so. Leam would not admire her so much if she weren’t capable of a great deal of subtle understanding.”
Kitty was obliged to swallow across the dryness of her tongue. “Involved in the piracy exactly how?”
Lady Constance’s cerulean eyes sparkled. Mr. Yale grinned.
Constance said softly, “You must tell Lord Chamberlayne that Leam knows where the cargo is located and is working with a confederate to see it delivered to Highland rebels intent on separation from England.”
A shiver climbed up Kitty’s spine. She looked from one to the other. “Does he?”
“Not that we know,” Mr. Yale replied. “But if Chamberlayne is involved with the rebels, he won’t want the cargo’s location or its new owners bandied about, will he?”
“What would he do to someone who knew?”
The gentleman’s gaze remained steady. “Plotting rebellion, my lady, makes men anxious to remove obstacles.”
“You believe Lord Chamberlayne is truly consorting with rebels?” She could barely utter the words.
“Frankly we haven’t any idea. But informants suggest he is.”
“Then why does—Why doesn’t he? He told me he doesn’t believe any of it.”
Constance’s eyes shaded. Mr. Yale folded his hands behind his back.
Kitty’s heart raced. “He doesn’t care about it one way or the other, does he?”
“Not in the least.”
“Then why doesn’t he just go home? Isn’t that where he wishes to be anyway?”
Mr. Yale inclined his head, but did not speak. Constance’s soft gaze grew very direct. Kitty could not quite breathe.
He could not be doing it all for her. But they seemed to be saying exactly that. And Lord Gray.
Even Leam had admitted it, to a point. Somehow her safety had something to do with this.
“Does he know you wish me to do this?”
“Oh, no. In fact he mustn’t just yet or he will spoil it all. He won’t like to have you involved.”
“Not remotely,” Mr. Yale murmured.
“Will it put him in danger?”
“Ultimately, if we are right, it will remove him from danger entirely, and you as well.”
Her heart pounded. “How do I know to trust you?”
“Because we care for him. Quite a lot.” Constance smiled with such genuine warmth it could not be a lie. Mr. Yale lifted a brow and grinned from the side of his mouth, looking uncannily boyish.
Kitty took a deep breath, her heart racing. “Yes.”
Her mother could not accuse her of not behaving as herself on the carriage ride, even after they dropped Emily and Madame Roche home. Kitty chatted as though she hadn’t a care in the world.
She’d never had more. The following night at a ball she was to put the plan in motion. Her nerves jittered and tangled.
“Mama,” she said as they entered the foyer, “I am going for a ride.” She could not sit still, not to embroider or read or write letters or even to accept callers.
“I won’t join you, dear. I must finish my correspondence, and Lord Chamberlayne is to take tea here later.” The dowager removed her gloves and set them on the foyer table. “Here is a package for you. Perhaps another token of affection from one of your disinterested suitors.”
Kitty shot the footman a glance. John flashed a grin, then pokered up.
She took up the large envelope and went to the stairs. She did not recognize the hand, but it was firm and bold. Her fingers shook a bit as she tore an opening in the top. This spy business was making her edgy. Gathering information to ruin Lambert had been more hobby than anything else, albeit a wretched one. Last summer when she had turned over that information to the authorities, she had done so in panic and only as a last-minute effort to help Alex. Now she had no such excuse except the conviction in her heart, and she was working with real spies. It made her … fidgety.
Good heavens. Next she would be admitting to pride and disobedience. Then her mother and Leam could have a congratulatory toast over how well they knew her character flaws.
She drew out the contents of the envelope. Halfway up the stair, she paused to grip the rail to steady herself.
It was a crisp, newly printed booklet of sheet music: Racine’s play Phaedra in the original French, set to music. A calling card was tucked into one of the pages. She opened to it, and the Earl of Blackwood’s embossed card dropped into her palm.
Beneath the bars of graceful notes at the top of the page were the lyrics, the playwright’s poetry. It was the prince Hippolyte’s speech to a friend. In it he spoke of the woman he secretly loved although he knew he should not.
Kitty’s hands trembled as she read the line of verse. Si je la haïssais, je ne la fuirais pas. “If I hated her,” she read in a shaky whisper, “I should not fly.”
“How shall we celebrate your birthday tomorrow, Kitty?” Her mother’s voice came close behind her.
Kitty slipped Leam’s card into her sleeve and continued up the stairs, tucking the music under her arm as though it were nothing. As though it weren’t everything.
Well, not precisely everything. Phaedra was still a tragedy no matter what sort of music one put it to. Kitty recalled bodies strewn about the stage at the end of the last act. But she refused to live a tragedy. Tragedies were for foolish girls. Not for her. Not any longer.
“However you wish, Mama.” She willed her voice steady, but her step was light, her breaths short now from something more than nerves, much more than anxiety. She went into the drawing room, set the music on the pianoforte’s stand and folded back the instrument’s cover. Her hands quivered as she slipped onto the bench and put them to the keys.
She still played regularly, and now the notes came easily, rich and sorrowful beneath her fingertips. But under the bars of music the lyrics were beautiful, full of longing and betrayal, hope and the heartbreak of impossible love, and she could not remain silent. She sang, knowing he meant for her to sing, and she sounded awful. Her throat was unaccustomed to it and in any case clogged with emotion. It made her laugh, but she allowed herself the sweet release. She allowed herself to feel.
It was very frightening, and her fingers tripped on the keys.
“Kitty, whatever are you singing? It sounds perfectly dreadful.” Her mother stood at the door.
“Oh, it isn’t the music.” Her hands moved across the ivory and ebony bars. “It is rather me. But I shall get it right eventually. I need practice.” Practice allowing life to live inside her again. Practice leaving behind the past.
“I thought you were going riding.”
“Perhaps later.” She hummed the melancholy melody, her lips irrepressibly curved upward. He was a peculiar man, an impossible man, and she loved him.
Chapter 21
Leam scanned the crowded ballroom, nothing in his hooded gaze to reveal his particular interest in anyone or anything. This time, his façade was more a lie than ever.
He’d found little at the War Office on Cox, only a name in a register and a record of payments, but no address or county of origin. Cox had not lied about sharing James’s regiment. Still, he seemed a ghost. A ghost with a pistol pointed at Kitty Savege and who had not yet shown himself to collect his property. Who, it seemed, was now the one playing games.
“I cannot believe I am standing beside you looking like that,” Constance murmured, taking a glass of ratafia from a passing footman’s tray.
“You’ve done so plenty of times before, my dear, and you needn’t stand beside me a’tall. I am sure there are at least a dozen gentlemen who would be glad of your company.” Dancers pirouetted across the boards accompanied by harpsichord, violins, celli, and flute. Two chandeliers suspended from the high ceiling cast the assembly in a heated glow, the
chamber stuffy, overly dark, and full to the brim with high society.
“I wouldn’t,” she said, “but I am afraid you will leave if I step away for a moment.” She glanced at his shabby evening finery.
“I have no plans to depart just yet.” Before Leam had left his house to pick up Constance, a boy had come bearing a note from Grimm. Kitty was to attend this ball tonight. Leam knew not whether to flee or remain and test his fortitude. He had vowed to himself that he would not demand anything of her until he was perfectly assured of her safety. He owed her that.
So he remained. He ached to simply see her.
“And I am not such a rogue as all that to abandon you to your eager admirers without suitable protection,” he muttered to his cousin. “Where is your companion, Mrs. Jacobs?”
“In some corner having a cozy gossip.” Constance smiled.
“I thought my uncle would attend tonight.”
“Papa changed his plans. But perhaps—Oh, there is Wyn. What a pleasant surprise.”
But Leam could not follow her attention. A woman had appeared at the ballroom’s entrance. A clever-tongued woman. A woman of as much pride and warmth as beauty. Through the shifting dancers he glimpsed her rich tresses arranged loosely atop her head with sparkling combs, the gentle curve of her cheek, her silken shoulders and arms left nearly bare by a shimmering gown of ivory. A man parched with thirst, he drank in the sight of her. She smiled at her companion, an elegant gentleman, and a streak of mingled pleasure and possessive heat worked its way from Leam’s chest into his tight throat.
But it lacked the edge of mania he’d felt long ago. Instead, confidence curled around the jealousy.
She wanted him, and she did not wish to play games.
Yale strolled to Constance’s side.
“Evening, cousins.” He bowed, hands folded behind his back. “Haven’t seen you in an age, Blackwood. Where have you been this week?”
“None of your business.”
“Tracking down Scottish rebels, like you said you wouldn’t? Pursuing information on Chamberlayne, I suspect. The director certainly seems to have you in the harness again, doesn’t he?”
“I cannot hit you here, Yale, but I’ll be happy to do so outside. Join me?”
“Charmed, I’m sure. You look like one of your dogs again, whiskers and all.”
Leam turned to his cousin. “Now that you have suitable company, Constance, I will depart. Yale, put yourself to good use and see the lady home when she desires it, why don’t you.”
Constance rested her fingertips on his arm.
“Leam, we must speak with you now. Privately.”
He glanced at the Welshman. The lad lifted a single black brow.
Leam frowned. “‘What a pleasant surprise’? Constance,” he said quietly, “your acting abilities impress even me occasionally.”
She dimpled. “Thank you.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You don’t want to refuse.” The Welshman’s gaze shifted across the crowd. Leam followed it. To Kitty.
Anger rose swiftly. “Am I to assume the two of you are in league with Gray again?” he said with a great deal more control than the hot blood racing in his veins merited.
“Oh, not at all,” Constance demurred. “Quite the opposite. But don’t scowl. You are in costume.
Unfortunately.” Gently she tugged on his sleeve, offering a generous chuckle as though she were vastly diverted.
Leam looked back to Kitty. She lifted her gaze to him. Clear across the ballroom, the thunderclouds invited him in, a smile playing about her lips, and nothing seemed to exist between them but perfectly pure desire and that beauty of understanding in which he still could not quite trust.
Not entirely. But he would. Now he would go to her, take her from the ball, and make love to her.
Then there would be nothing between them but what they both wanted.
Her gaze flickered past his shoulder and her smile faded. She turned away and, slipping through the crowd, disappeared into another room.
“Come, my lord,” Yale said at his shoulder. “It is time we apprise you of certain matters.”
He went.
Kitty approached Lord Chamberlayne, moving through the crowd from friend to acquaintance as she did at all such events, holding her head high and with serene countenance, ignoring the stares and gossip that floated in her wake, renewed since Lambert was exiled.
“My lord,” she said, touching him on the sleeve, like a daughter. “May I have a brief word with you?”
“Of course, Lady Katherine.” He bowed to his companions and moved aside with her. About them the music rose and fell, only to rise again. She felt Leam’s gaze still in her blood, warm and speaking so many things without a word. As always.
“Is your mother unwell?” Lord Chamberlayne asked. “I’m afraid I have lost her in this crush.”
“Oh, no, my lord. I sought you out on my own mission. You see…”
It was difficult to mouth the lies. His eyes shone clear gray, much lighter than her father’s. In his face was compassion too, she had never noticed in her father’s when he still lived. This man was kind at heart. If only there were another way. But nothing could convince her of the necessity of her pantomime if not Leam’s bedraggled appearance, his bearded jaw, and, most of all, the look in his eyes before she had caught his gaze. She must do this and discover the truth for her mother’s sake.
And for Leam’s.
Lord Chamberlayne tucked her hand into his elbow.
“Kitty, I hope you will trust me with any concern, large or small. You are like my own daughter, you know, if I’d had one.”
“You have only your son, of course.”
“Yes. And I see so little of him, as he prefers to remain at home in Scotland.”
“Yes.” She paused. “You see, I have come seeking advice—rather, assistance regarding a Scottish gentleman.”
“Have you an admirer you wish me to speak with? I know I am not your father, but I hope someday to be of such assistance to you.”
“Oh, well, yes, in a manner of speaking.” She plunged in. “But you see, my lord, he is not an admirer. I fear his attentions went a great deal farther than admiration and now I am in something of a quandary.”
His arm went stiff. “Has a gentleman insulted you?”
“Not—not without my consent,” she said hastily, the words slippery on her tongue. “You see, well, I am not entirely ashamed to admit that I expected more of him. But he has disappointed me.”
His face was stony.
“Do you wish me to call him out on your behalf, Kitty? If so, you may expect it of me. I consider your family my own.”
She nearly lost courage. How could a man of such fidelity to her mother be a traitor to his country?
“I believe,” she said slowly, “that will not be necessary. I believe, in fact, that he may be made uncomfortable in quite another manner entirely.”
His brow creased. “It would be simpler for my understanding if you named the man.”
So she did, naming him and pouring out the remainder of her false story, the ship and its stolen cargo and her trust that a friend like Lord Chamberlayne could help her reveal the Earl of Blackwood’s villainy to the proper authorities. She included the time and place the following morning at which Leam planned to meet an informant. Wouldn’t it be marvelous if government officials were there to apprehend them for their crime?
It astounded her how quickly Lord Chamberlayne’s eyes glimmered with interest, and how he asked her for details. Her heart ached. She reminded herself that her mother and Leam’s safety were both bound into this pretense.
Lord Chamberlayne patted her hand, his brow taut. “I will see to it that the gentleman is brought to task for his treasonous activities if such they are.”
“I will see it as well. I will be there tomorrow morning too.”
“I cannot allow that,” he said firmly. “These men are not playing games.”
“Kitty? Douglas?” Her mother appeared beside her. “The two of you have the appearance of plotters. I hope I am not interrupting.”
“Not at all, Mama. We were saying good night. I have danced myself into exhaustion and cannot remain a minute longer. Will you find another way if I take the carriage?”
Her mother regarded her through wise brown eyes and finally said, “Yes, dear. Of course.”
Kitty fled from the drawing room into the ballroom. But there she found no respite from her tumult of feelings either. Pressing through the crowd of guests merry now with wine and dance and the wee hours, she made her way to a parlor filled with revelers, then another chamber, and another. She descended the stairs of the mansion into the cool lower story. What had she done? Why had she trusted them? All she had truly wanted was to see him again, be with him, and now this dishonesty, this pretense once more.
She came into a corridor behind the stairwell, empty of all but a maid rushing from one place to the next. The girl passed by with a swift curtsy and Kitty pressed her back against a wall, trapping her unsteady hands behind her, and drew slow breaths.
A door opened at the corridor’s opposite end and the Earl of Blackwood came through it. Music trickled down the stairs from above, but the beat of her heart drowned it out. They looked at each other without moving, his eyes darkly shining.
“It—” The words tumbled from her lips. “It is my birthday today.”
He smiled, a sort of lopsided smile not entirely in control that turned Kitty’s insides out.
“Aye,” he replied in a low voice. “That i’tis.”
He did not move. She did not.
“They told you about the plan, didn’t they?”
“Aye.”
On the stair just above, voices sounded and feet descended. She had many questions, and unspoken needs better left unspoken. Tearing her gaze away, she went across the landing to the front of the house, to the foyer and out, to her carriage and home.
The footman greeted her with sleepy eyes. She told him to turn in and went to the parlor to pace.
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